This study critiques Pachinko’s transnationalism as neoliberal incorporation strategy. Initially, Sunja and the boarding house emerge as colonial Korea’s subalterns who forge transnational solidarity with Japanese subalterns after migration. While the narrative exposes imperial Japan's colonial legacy through second-generation discrimination by the model minority myth and cultural racism, its technique—backgrounding history while foregrounding the Sunja family's exemplary trajectory—conflates Zainichi Koreans and Korean Americans as a unified “Korean diaspora” by third-generation experiences of racial neoliberalism. This obscures their divergent conditions: post-1965 South Korean migration both resulted from and fueled U.S.-led global economic restructuring, while disenfranchised Zainichi were compelled to register as North or South Korean under Cold War imperatives. Since nationality operates as a symbolic passport determining migratory access within U.S. hegemonic projects, “Transnational” designates only those permitted mobility under neoliberal order. By rendering Zainichi nationality as personal choice rather than neoliberal imposition, the novel dehistoricizes and epistemologically silences Zainichi realities.